Category: ephemera

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I really liked this insight over at The American Scene:

That the distinct virtues that he imparts to the N’avi really are both distinct and virtuous. They are not ours. They are theirs. Sitting in the audience, we’re not secretly thinking, Goddamn primitives. Good thing Jake Sully’s around to help them overcome their lack of technology. We’re thinking, They don’t even need cars. This whole theme reminds me of Jonah Goldberg’s sound criticism of the tendency to find racism in movie portraits like that of the Orcs in Lord of the Rings, which is basically, wait, who’s looking at the Orcs and seeing black people? In this case, if when you see blue aliens on screen you think “black people” or “Native Americans,” why is that James Cameron’s fault? Why is your itch to protect people of color from condescension via a movie portrait of aliens from an alien planet (that people of color are digging in movie theaters worldwide) not itself condescending?

I saw Avatar and loved it, even as I anticipated every single complaint I heard from conservatives, progressives, and the movie critics. And it’s far from being a perfect movie, or even a great movie, but it was a heck of a good time and doesn’t deserve half of the mud that’s been flung at it.

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Raymond Chen gets what’s wrong with church advertising.

I received a brochure in the mail for a local church which says that it’s “full of people just like you.”

Everybody in the brochure is white.

“You’ll fit right in!” it concludes.

The comment thread is worth reading, too.

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We are living through another week in which natural disaster provokes many to say, “Where is God?” Of course, many who will now ask, “Where is God?” said nothing the week before when Haitian children were dying of a hosts of curable and treatable illnesses and circumstances. The Christian answer to the question, “Where is God?” is “He is everywhere present and filling all things.” God is in Haiti: in some cases crushed beneath stones and in other cases removing the stones from those who are crushed.

From Fr. Stephen Freeman.

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I can’t help myself. This one is shockingly lucid—a tale of sex and violence.

Haris, and the other did too, Chelen, and bath, and struck Haris in confusion. Because I know. We hit it.

Kallistos said. He did begin to Digamma. The key to call out, I think that _you_, Chelen answered.

She struck him, barely touching in strange. You have to ask me questions, come, Gejey smoothed her skirt over her last night previous day by flame.

You can read and you should know. I’ve waited so long, who know you believe that Achoyo-

It was just yourself and onto the room and dropped below the horizon of her face.

A hand signed: Look. A mental image of them, then. Every time he felt like he was ill-equipped to do with Layra and the design. Chelen and chaste at home—that was all after this?

Why can’t you see those unwelcome in Burah knew that it was appearing all sorts of order. He set down his face looked haggard and mean?

Oh, silent.

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So I wrote up a quick Markov chain text generator today and ran it across one of my WIPs. And boy, has it given me some beauties. Try this one on mor size;

The buyers laughed again. Her fingertips brushed Haris’s cheek. I did too many, and see. The sun of ascetics caught him as he had lost a perilous amount of voices pattered around the ground. Then, it was Layra who broke in, with Chelen sprawled on the relation to her feet. You’re not coming up onto the lazy expectation that I won’t be afraid, but it required far more subtlety than a few moments he was because I hear. He had more things to do. Chelen had been nearly all of some kind of tiny shrine, as a bull kash. Everyone in medicine after that. But she asked Sezu, he was destroyed. But I _will_ come. And the entire bowl of clean water lay him down first one to Haris said. I’ve never once had been emptied, don’t know the patter of wine waited on the floor. He waited, Haris. She stood now. Maybe he spied a large black shape moving behind them.

I’m struck by the fear that this is substantially more interesting than my actual story.

Here’s one more:

Your scope, unchastened by his exile, even after that I’ll have no sense-

I’m sorry. I don’t care. I’m not damaged as he had been reading, but what’s hard for that part. You’re right after all happen? Certainly not because he didn’t actually understand.

The gang that he spoke he turned away and shoulder. Haris had grown along the summits of the table. Did you want? Not if he stretched—but the area near the Hesychian patrimony to every side stood grim men watching and growled. I found enough for her, you despite.

Layra.

Do you. Follow me-

Quiet!

You sound like an awl, but he spied the carriage door with mumbling fingers skated across the table. No, Deva said, while four more sureness and they were clothes heaped at random. No, united in heavy blue vest.

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My wife left me a message at work in Romanian. An experimental feature right now runs speech-to-text software on the voicemails and sends you an email with a transcription. This is what it sent:

Hi sweetie them again IG on triggered.

Be done Lisa nice day seven fifty class I received five back in mean it someone from 10 like.

Mr. 9 pounds.

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I’m finally getting around to fleshing out my thoughts on Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, which I finished about a week ago. And to start things off on a positive note, I’m going to start by talking about the things that the serious does extremely well.

The first book (The Golden Compass) is great from cover to cover, and there’s almost nothing bad to say about it. The heroine is marvelous, the settings gorgeous, and the world-building intriguing and complete. My favorites have to be the panserbjørne, though: giant armored bears who “make their own souls”. Iorek Byrnison is one of the most memorable figures of of recent fantasy literature, and he rightfully sits next to Aslan in the pantheon of dangerous-talking-animals-who-help-little-girl-protagonists.

In fact, what I remember most about the first book is the colorful, intriguing cast of secondary characters: the witches, the gyptians, and especially the Texan Lee Scoresby. I wished the second and third books had more of that–but then, I wished a lot of things about the second and third books.

Also, it’s impossible for me to talk about this book without bringing up the controversy and hostility the book generated in Christian circles. Some of the criticism was justified: Pullman’s clearly has it out for the Church, and his polemics derail his plot, especially in book 3. (More on this later.) But there was some rather hysterical stuff, especially lines like this: “I pointed out that, in these books, everything we normally associate with safety and security—parents, priests, and even God himself—is evil, is indeed ‘the stuff of nightmares.'” That says too much. Lyra’s actual parents are pretty nasty, but her surrogate parents (the gyptians, and to some extent Iorek Byrnison) are loving and courageous. In fact, there’s quite a bit of Christian virtue to be found in the heroes of the books, and a great many valuable or wise lessons imparted by Lyra’s surrogate parents.

As for the priests and God, that will have to be a separate post.

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Which of the following myths is ultimately more harmful to realistic, honest human relationships?

  1. Sex is always dirty, shameful, and unpleasant, and should never be talked about at all.
  2. Sex is always fun, magical, and liberating, and should be talked about incessantly.

I’m calling it a toss-up.

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This time with actual Buddhism!

Japanese Buddhist monks were not allowed to eat any meat other than birds, but liked rabbit meat so much they came up with the contrived “explanation” that rabbits are actually birds, and that their ears are unusable wings. The rationale was that while moving, ther rabbits touched ground only with two feet at a time.

Source.